‘He either is or he isn’t. And don’t tell me that he could be doing both at the same time. We’re not talking parallel universes here.’
She sighed heavily and said, ‘Isn’t. I’ve got a nanny, a local girl. And it’s a bit late to worry about the welfare of your son.’
‘Well, I haven’t worried earlier because you told me he wasn’t my son,’ Jackson said reasonably.
‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an autopsy at three o’clock.’
It came to him suddenly. ‘Well I never,’ Jackson said to the dog. The dog looked at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence. Vince Collier’s mother was none other than the confused old woman in the Merrion Centre. ‘I knew I’d seen her before. It was the wig that threw me.’
He watched Collier to the bitter end. Julia appeared twice (‘Dr Beatrice Butler’, maternal but savvy, sexy but intellectual – a sketchy version of Julia’s own complexity). The first time she was on screen she was attending a murder scene where she estimated the time of death of a mutilated prostitute and then a short time later she was in the mortuary, where she was pretending to cut open the body of the victim. Jackson preferred nature programmes, even at their most bloodthirsty they were preferable to this crap. ‘It’s very popular,’ Julia said. ‘Great viewing figures.’
Real murder was disgusting. And smelly and messy and usually heartbreaking, invariably meaningless, occasionally tedious, but not this neat sanitized narrative. And the victims were often prostitutes, dispensable as tissues, both in reality and in fiction.
‘Art, my arse,’ Jackson muttered to the dog.
He waited for Vince Collier’s mother’s name to come up on the credits. Marjorie Collier, played by Matilda Squires. ‘See, I was right,’ he said to the dog. Ten-take Tilly. The dog sneezed suddenly, three times in a row, little chew-chew-chew sounds that Jackson found oddly (and inexplicably) touching.
He turned the television off and went back to his old friend Google, typing the name ‘Marilyn Nettles’ into the phone. All he ever did was search for women. He was about to give up when he found something on a site ‘dedicated to Yorkshire writers’. Marilyn Nettles writes under the pen name of Stephanie Dawson. Nettles is a former crime reporter with the Yorkshire Post and lives in the historic town of Whitby. Jackson celebrated with a cup of tea from the hospitality tray. Since this morning everything had been replenished by the chambermaid and he broke open another packet of biscuits and rationed them out between himself and the dog.
‘We’re in luck,’ he said to the dog, tossing it a custard cream. ‘Marilyn Nettles, here I come.’
He was just thinking about taking the dog out for his last walk of the day and then turning in early when there was a knock at the door. The dog’s ears went on to high alert. ‘Room service,’ a voice said loudly from the other side of the door.
‘I haven’t ordered anything on room service,’ Jackson said to the dog. He might perhaps have recalled several scenes in films he had watched over the years where a waiter pushes a trolley, cloaked in white linen, into the room, a trolley which turns out to be hiding in its innards anything from a machine-gun to a voluptuous blonde. But Jackson didn’t recall any of this, so he opened the door.
‘Jesus,’ he said when he saw what was on the trolley.
‘For me? You shouldn’t have.’
The trolley was laden with a silver ice-bucket containing a bottle of Bollinger that was sweating attractively with cold. It all seemed very upmarket for a Best Western. The trolley was in the room before Jackson had the chance to point out the unlikelihood of it being for him. Perhaps a woman was trying to woo him. Not any of the women he’d encountered recently, that was for sure. The waiter – thinning grey hair, crumpled grey skin – looked more like an old fashioned, mild-mannered serial killer than your usual room-service staff. He spotted the dog on the bed and began to make a tremendous fuss of it. ‘Had one of these myself when I was a lad,’ he grinned at Jackson. ‘Border terrier. Brilliant little dogs. Cheeky little chappies.’
The guy was scratching and tickling the dog to within an inch of its life. The dog looked surprised. It seemed to have a wide range of facial expressions. Its repertoire was probably greater than Jackson’s own. He waited to see if the waiter would point out that dogs weren’t allowed in the hotel but he didn’t, eventually tearing himself away from the dog, saying, ‘Would you like me to open this for you, Mr King?’
‘Ah,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m not Mr King, think you’ve got the wrong room. Nearly got away with that,’ he said and laughed. Ha, ha.
‘I wouldn’t have said anything,’ the waiter said. He grinned and tapped the side of his nose, a gesture that Jackson didn’t think he had ever seen outside of an Ealing comedy. ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’
‘I would be inclined to say the opposite was true,’ Jackson said.
‘What you don’t know can hurt you.’ They both laughed. Hardly enough space in the room for so much affability. LOL.
‘Get you anything else, squire?’ the waiter asked, backing the trolley out of the room.
‘No. Thank you,’ Jackson said. When he had gone Jackson looked at the dog. The dog looked at Jackson. Jackson sighed and sat on the bed next to it. The dog wagged its tail but Jackson said, ‘Keep still, there’s a good boy,’ and ran his finger round the inside of the dog’s collar until he found the tracking device. He showed it to the dog. ‘Amateurs,’ he explained.
One of the things that you definitely didn’t do with kids was to drive with them in the back of a car through red-light districts at night, looking for a prostitute. In the badlands, near the junction of Water Lane and Bridge Road, an unmarked squad car from vice prowling for kerb-crawlers cruised past them in the opposite direction. Did they recognize her? Tracy drove sedately on, wondering if they had noticed the kid in the back.
Kelly Cross wanted more money. No surprise there then. The puzzle was how she had got hold of Tracy’s mobile number. (Listen, you fat fucking cow, you had no right to take that kiddy. If you want to keep her you’re going to have to fork out a lot more.) Well, there you go, Tracy thought, wasn’t she paying the price of having bought the kid at a discount, as in her heart she’d always known she would have to? And how long would this kind of extortion go on for? Until Courtney was grown up and had kids of her own? Would Kelly last that long? She didn’t really belong to a demographic that boasted of longevity. It would be much better if Kelly Cross died – a bad batch of heroin, a psycho punter – who would miss her, after all? That kiddy, Kelly Cross said. Not my kiddy. Although mothers like Kelly were pretty uninterested in their kids. Weren’t they?
All the lovely places. Bridge End, Sweet Street West, Bath Road. A wasteland. Literally. No one to hear you scream. A couple of prostitutes on the swing shift, huddled up against a wall. Offhand, smoking fags like connoisseurs. One was raddled by life, the other one looked underage, shivering, glassy skin, coming down off something. Pretty Woman it ain’t, Tracy thought. Tracy wondered if they were mother and daughter. They were on the job, she wasn’t any more, she reminded herself.
As Tracy brought the car to a halt her phone rang. Barry. Oh, for God’s sake. The only way to stop him was to speak to him.
‘Where are you?’ he asked when she answered, sounding unnecessarily peeved, like a husband.
‘Bath Road,’ she said, watching as the younger of the two women began tottering towards her car. Thigh-high boots with hooker heels, short denim cut-offs, little strappy vest, nasty jacket.
‘What are you doing there?’ Barry puzzled.
‘Looking for someone. What do you want?’
‘Did you get my messages about this Jackson bloke?’
‘Yes, I’ve got no idea who he is,’ Tracy said.
‘Want me to do something about it?’ Barry asked. The echo of Harry Reynolds’s words to her earlier. She rolled down the car window and the young prostitute, more child than woman, looked confused at the sight of her. ‘You looking
for business?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘Yeah,’ Tracy said. She produced a twenty-pound note like a lure and said, ‘Different kind of business.’
‘Tracy?’ Barry said. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I didn’t say but this Jackson bloke, whoever he is, asked about Carol Braithwaite.’
‘Carol Braithwaite? Look, I’ve got to go, Barry. I’ll phone you later.’ She snapped the phone shut and shouted, ‘Hang on,’ to the girl who had taken the money and was about to scarper. She returned reluctantly to the car and was joined by the older woman who, catching sight of Tracy, said, ‘Trace, ’ow yer doing?’
‘Bloody brilliant,’ Tracy said. ‘Quiet tonight, isn’t it?’
‘Recession. And we’re being undercut all the time by crackwhores. There’s girls offering full strip and sex for ten quid. It’s a different world, Tracy.’ It was what Barry had said, what Harry Reynolds had said. Tracy thought she must be missing something, it felt like the same world as ever to her. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, kids everywhere falling through the cracks. The Victorians would have recognized it. People just watched a lot more TV and found celebrities interesting, that was all that was different.
‘Yeah, terrible,’ Tracy said. ‘Everything discounted. I’m actually looking for Kelly Cross.’
‘Me mam?’ the younger one said.
Jesus, Tracy thought. Would the circle never be broken? She was acutely aware of Courtney in the back. Was this her half-sister? Was this the fate Courtney would have been destined for if Tracy hadn’t rescued her? The older woman – Liz, if Tracy’s memory served her – peered into the back of the car.
‘Yours?’ she asked Tracy, sucking thoughtfully on her cigarette.
‘Not exactly,’ Tracy said. Not much reason for dissembling with this pair, what were they going to do – stagger off to the nearest police officer and grass her up?
‘Nice outfit, pet,’ Liz said to Courtney, who in reply made a papal kind of gesture with her silver wand.
‘Do you recognize her?’Tracy asked. All three of them scrutinized the kid in the back seat. She was halfway through an apple and paused mid-bite. Rosy red, eaten by Snow White. The apple and the wand, the orb and sceptre of her sovereign regalia.
‘No, sorry,’ Liz said.
‘Nah,’ the younger one said, to Tracy’s relief.
‘Have you got a name?’ Tracy said to her.
‘Nah.’
Tracy looked at the girl. A fille de joie who was forty times more likely to die a violent death than the fellow members of her sex. What could you do? Nothing.
‘No, go on really,’ Tracy said, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Chevaunne. C-h-e-v-a-u-n-n-e, I have to spell it every time, it’s a fucking pain. It’s Irish.’ At least the girl could spell, even if it was only her own misspelled name. Kelly Cross was so thick she couldn’t even spell ‘Siobhan’. Kelly’s mother had been Irish. Fionnula. Tracy had been around so long that she’d seen three generations of prostitutes pass her by. ‘A right Gyppo,’ Barry used to say. Gypsies and Irish were interchangeable as far as Barry was concerned, both equally bad.
Tracy turned her attention to Liz. ‘Can you give me an address for Kelly?’
‘She was in Hunslet.’
‘Harehills,’ Chevaunne butted in. ‘But it’ll cost you.’
Tracy handed over another twenty-pound note in exchange for Kelly Cross’s address. ‘Now fuck off, the pair of you,’ she said.
A grey Avensis turned into Bath Road, pulled off the road in front of them and parked on the forecourt of an abandoned warehouse of some kind, a blighted piece of real estate. Seemed a mite coincidental. Tracy looked for the pink rabbit but the car was too far away for her to see.
‘Ey up,’ Liz said and the belles de jour teetered off again, towards the Avensis.
‘That’s a grey car,’ Courtney said helpfully.
‘Yeah, I see it, pet.’
Tracy parked in the alley that ran along the back of the street. Killed the engine, climbed out of the car and unstrapped Courtney. The last place she wanted to take the kid was Kelly Cross’s house but what choice did she have – she could hardly leave her alone in the back of a car in a seedy alley. From the first moment she saw Kelly Cross in the Merrion Centre yesterday it seemed Tracy had done nothing but make choices, an endless series of forks in the road. Sooner or later she was going to hit a dead end. If she hadn’t already.
Kelly was the only thing that linked Tracy to Courtney. Get rid of Kelly and you broke the chain of evidence leading back to Tracy. Then it would just be Imogen and her little girl Lucy. No need for Tracy to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life. Kill Kelly Cross. Even the alliteration was alluring. Her heart started to thud uncomfortably in her chest. Get rid of the link between Kelly and the kid, between Kelly and herself. Forge a new terrible bond but get rid of Kelly Cross’s claims on them. Who was better placed to commit a murder properly than the police?
The door to Kelly’s back yard was open. The yard was small and claustrophobically full of rubbish – an old washing machine, a filthy armchair, black bin bags containing God knows what. The windows of the house were filthy, cracked, full of powdery, fly-filled cobwebs. There was a piece of paper sellotaped on to the peeling paintwork of the back door that spelled out ‘Cross’ in a semi-literate hand. The door itself looked as if it had been kicked in a few times. Tracy sighed. She had spent a working lifetime knocking on doors like this.
And getting no answer.
She knocked again, louder this time, a police knock. Nothing. She gave the door a tentative push and it swung open. This was always an ominous moment in TV thrillers – nothing good was ever discovered behind the open door – but in Tracy’s experience all it usually meant was that someone had forgotten to lock up.
The door opened straight into the kitchen. She took a cautious step inside and said, ‘Kelly?’ She was half expecting Kelly to fly out of nowhere screaming like a banshee. She took another couple of steps and realized that Courtney was on her heels as if they were playing a game of statues. ‘Stay there, pet, OK?’Tracy said. Tracy took another couple of steps into the kitchen, the kid still following. Tracy pulled a chair out from the table and said, ‘Sit down. Don’t touch anything.’
Tracy put the light on. No one ever switched the light on either in TV crime thrillers. For the atmosphere, Tracy supposed. She could live without atmosphere. The whole kitchen was a health hazard. The flickering fluorescent light illuminated foil takeaway cartons, dirty pots and pans, rotten food, sour milk, a top note of alcohol and fags.
‘Kelly?’ Tracy said again, advancing into the hallway. Tracy switched on lights as she went. It was twilight outside but the house contained a deeper kind of dusk.
A small room at the back. Completely full of boxes, their insides spilling out, mostly clothes that looked only fit for shoddy. The second room was a living room, if you could call it that. About as bad as a room could get. Old fag packets, dirty plates and more takeaway cartons. Empty bottles and cans, a syringe poking out from beneath the sofa cushion, everything soiled and unsanitary. Tracy had read reports about Leeds from the nineteenth century, the poverty, the awful conditions of the industrial poor. Knee-deep in ordure. Not much different here.
No sign of a child in the house, Tracy noted, no clothes or toys or DVDs. Reluctantly, she made her way up the steep, narrow staircase. There were three doors to choose from, all of them closed. Like a fairy story. Or a nightmare. Tracy had a flashback to Lovell Park again, Ken Arkwright putting in the door with his shoulder. The smell that was released, the flies . . .
The bathroom was disgusting. Surely Kelly couldn’t bring her clients back here? Even the least discerning of punters might jib at entering this den of iniquity.
The second door led to a small bedroom. Completely empty. Nothing, just fluff, dust, scraps of foil, stray polystyrene chips like albino Quavers on the bare boards.
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Only one door remained. Tracy hesitated, recoiling from the possibility of interrupting Kelly in the middle of providing services for one of her less selective patrons. She rapped loudly on the door and said, ‘Kelly? Kelly, it’s Tracy. Tracy Waterhouse.’ When there was no answer she warily pushed the door open.
The offal and sewage smell of death was everywhere. Even Tracy’s tough police ticker missed a beat. Kelly Cross was sprawled on the bed, her head mashed in, her belly slashed open. She looked as if she was in her work uniform, a tiny black skirt and a silver-sequinned halter top. Some of the sequins were scattered on the bed, glinting like fish scales in the harsh overhead light.
Tracy put two fingers against Kelly Cross’s neck. No pulse. She didn’t know why she was checking, as it was glaringly obvious that Kelly was dead. She was still warm. Tracy preferred her dead bodies to be cold.
Kelly Cross was dead. Tracy had got what she had wished for. It suggested a dark magic at work if Tracy’s thoughts could be translated so fast. Tracy didn’t believe in magic. She believed in darkness though.
She had seen worse in the past, although that didn’t make the foul tableau in front of her eyes any less repugnant. No time to be shocked, however. Think like the police or think like a criminal? Tracy wondered. Turned out, as she had previously expected, that it was pretty much the same, but in reverse. She rooted in her bag for a tissue and wiped all the door handles and jambs. Shame she hadn’t got round to buying the Wet Wipes yet. She had probably left trace evidence behind, a hair, a flake of skin, a scale of fish. A trace of Tracy.
Had the kid touched anything? Courtney was still waiting dutifully in the kitchen. Did she suspect anything? Her expression was, as usual, unreadable.
‘Come on, pet,’ Tracy said, her voice cracking with the effort of sounding inanely cheerful. ‘Time to go home.’
The kid dipped the wand, a magisterial blessing on the house of the dead. She slipped off the chair and Tracy shepherded her out of the house. ‘Let’s get back in the car, Courtney.’